This extraordinary picture—deeply expressive and almost unique in showing the Baptism of Christ as occurring late at night—is the last known work by the great Venetian painter Jacopo Bassano, who left it unfinished when he died in 1592. It was viewed by his heirs as his artistic testament and was retained by them for more than a century. To our eyes, the altarpiece’s unfinished (non finito) style seems a crucial step towards modernism, to be compared with, for example, Goya's "black paintings." Bassano explores an expressive intensity—dark in mood as in the palette—that is a direct and deeply personal response to Titian's late pictures. He interprets the baptism of Christ not as a sunny event in a pastoral landscape but as the tragic opening of Christ's Passion.

Spectral figures of Christ, Saint John the Baptist, and three angels are shown in a nocturnal landscape. John leans forward and, turning back, baptizes Christ, who is also depicted leaning forward, as though shedding his scarlet robe. His tormented face expresses foreknowledge of his tragic destiny. The three angels serve as counterpoints: one, holding Christ's robe, gazes at him ecstatically while a second angel looks upward, at the mystical apparition of a dove in the black sky. The horizon is lit by the rays of the setting sun.

This extraordinary picture—deeply expressive and unique in Renaissance painting for showing the Baptism of Christ as occurring at night—is the last known work by the great Venetian painter Jacopo Bassano, who left it unfinished when he died in 1592. It was viewed by his heirs as his artistic testament and was retained by them rather than completed and delivered, as would have been the normal practice. They evidently felt that, as in the case of Michelangelo's and Titian's unfinished works, the picture fully expressed Jacopo's intentions. The picture is first listed in a transcription of the postmortem inventory of April 27, 1592 of the works of art in the studio of Jacopo Bassano. Number 64 records "Il battefimo di N.S. da S. Gio. Battifta, cioè una Tavola d' altare sbozzata" (The Baptism of Our Lord by Saint John the Baptist, unfinished). The picture remained unfinished and in family hands in Bassano. In 1648, Carlo Ridolfi records: "Si veggono etiãdio quefte Pitture nella propria habitatione hor poffeduta dal Signor Carlo fuo Pronipote erudito nella Pittura, e nelle buone lettere . . . Vna pala del battefimo di Chrifto, che fù vna delle ultime opera fue non finite . . . ." (In his house, now owned by Sig. Carlo his grand-nephew and knowledgeable in painting and letters . . . [there is] an altarpiece of the baptism of Christ that was one of [Jacopo's] last works, unfinished). All trace of the picture was lost until 1931, when the painting surfaced in Munich, with the art dealer Schnackenberg (Fröhlich-Bum 1931).

The idea of "non finito" (unfinished) as an expressive style rather than a mere description of the physical state of a work of art originates in the Renaissance. Ridolfi describes of Bassano's late pictures as "done in stabs (copli) of color." In the seventeenth century a sketched-in work might actually be preferred to a picture brought to a high degree of finish. To our eyes, this "non finito" seems a crucial step towards modernism, and the comparison of this work by Bassano with, for example, Goya's "black paintings" is inevitable. Comparisons with the last paintings of Caravaggio as well as with Rembrandt have been made. However, to a Renaissance viewer the analogy was, instead, with what they would have read in Pliny's Natural History (XXV.xl. 144–46): "It is also a very unusual and memorable fact that the last works of artists and their unfinished pictures such as the Iris of Aristides, the Tyndarus Children of Nicomachus, the Medea of Timomachus and the Aphrodite of Apelles which we have mentioned, are more admired than those which they finished, because in them are seen the preliminary drawings left visible and the artists' actual thoughts, and in the midst of approval's beguilement we feel regret that the artist's hand while engaged in the work was removed by death."

What cannot be doubted is that Bassano here explores an expressive intensity—dark in mood as in palette—that is a direct and deeply personal response to Titian's late pictures (in particular Titian's two versions of the Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence and his unfinished Pietà, painted to decorate his own funerary chapel). The pose of Christ is as though taken from a Way to Calvary and this analogy must have been on Bassano's mind.

Carlo Ridolfi. Le maraviglie dell'arte. Venice, 1648, part 1, p. 389, records it in the collection of Signor Carlo, descendant of the artist, in the artist's house in Bassano; refers to it as an altarpiece, one of Jacopo's last works, and unfinished.

L[ili]. Fröhlich-Bum. "Unbekannte Gemälde des Jacopo Bassano." Belvedere 10, no. 4 (1931), pp. 121–22, pl. 71, as with G. [sic?] Schnackenberg, Munich; places it in Bassano's final period, dating it between 1572 and 1582 and finding it close to the artist's "Entombment" of 1574 in Santa Maria in Vanzo, Padua; believes that the nocturnal setting misled Ridolfi and Verci [who was in fact merely reproducing the inventory of 1592] into thinking that the work was unfinished.

A[ugust]. L. Mayer. Ausstellung altvenezianischer Malerei. Exh. cat., Julius Böhler. Munich, 1931, unpaginated foreword, p. 1, no. 3, calls it unfinished and refers to it as one of the most beautiful achievements of Bassano's late period.

Edoardo Arslan. I Bassano. Milan, 1960, vol. 1, p. 357, includes it on his list of workshop and wrongly attributed works; rejects the attribution to Bassano, finding the handling too heavy; does not know its current whereabouts.

Theodore Rousseau in "Ninety-fifth Annual Report of the Trustees, for the Fiscal Year 1964–1965." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 24 (October 1965), p. 58, lists it as an anonymous loan to the Museum.

W. R. Rearick. "Jacopo Bassano's Last Painting: The Baptism of Christ." Arte veneta 21 (1967), pp. 104, 106–7, colorpl. 118, accepts it as the work listed in the inventory of 1592 and mentioned by Ridolfi in 1648, and calls it unfinished.

W. R. Rearick inJacopo Bassano, c. 1510–1592. Ed. Beverly Louise Brown and Paola Marini. Exh. cat., Museo Civico, Bassano del Grappa. Fort Worth, 1993, pp. 170–71, 452–53, no. 79, ill. (color) [Italian ed., Bologna, 1992, pp. CLXXXVII–VIII, 206–7, no. 79, ill. (color)], believes that it was probably commissioned by a provincial church southwest of Bassano and that a copy by Jacopo's son Gerolamo (Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona) was substituted for it, with Jacopo's unfinished painting "kept by the family as a revered relic of the old master's final creative effort"; notes that no other depictions of this subject by Jacopo are known since 1541.

Carlo Corsato. "Il 'Battesimo di Cristo' e l'eredità del 'brand' Bassano nelle botteghe dei figli di Jacopo." Verona illustrata no. 24 (2011), pp. 65–70, 74, 79, colorpl. III, figs. 44, 46, 50, 54, 58 (overall and details), defines the term "sbozzata" as it appears in Jacopo's inventory [see Ref. Bassano 1592] and does not think that this painting fulfills contemporary ideas of its meaning; believes that it would have been sent to the patron as an acceptable altarpiece; considers it to be a finished work and compares it to the version now in the Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona (for which he provides incorrect measurements), which he feels is more likely to be the "sbozzo" in the inventory; notes that the inventory does not mention that the action has a nocturnal setting and that the Verona version is less nocturnal in character; mentions another version (Simon Dickinson, London) that he believes is based on that in Verona and is a "ricordo" (record); speculates that the MMA painting was sent to a member of the Soranzo family and quotes Marco Boschini on a painting of the subject at the Ca' Soranza in Venice [p. 74 n. 3; the passage describes a God the Father as part of the composition].

Andrea Bayer, Michael Gallagher, and Silvia Centeno. "Jacopo Bassano's 'Baptism of Christ'." Artibus et Historiae no. 68 (2013), pp. 83–103, ill. (color, overall and details, before treatment, after cleaning, after treatment, paint cross-sections, x-radiograph, and infrared reflectogram), trace the provenance, detail the technique and treatment, and discuss the issue of the unfinished state of the painting.

This unfinished altarpiece was kept by the family of the artist after his death in 1592. A copy by Jacopo's son Gerolamo now in the Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona, may have been painted as a replacement for the unknown commissioner of the work, probably a provincial church (Rearick 1993).

Another version of the picture was included in a sale at Christie's, London, July 6, 2007, no. 224, not sold (as Attributed to Jacopo Bassano and Studio, 65 3/4 x 52 1/2 in.). It was with Simon C. Dickinson Ltd, London, in 2009.